


You Cost Me the Earth

by petrovasfire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Beacon Hills High School, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrovasfire/pseuds/petrovasfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia is desperate to get a last-minute date for the school dance by means of the one thing she's excellent at—bribery, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Cost Me the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-everything, basically. Before shit started going down. Right about when Allison arrives in Beacon Hills.

It starts when Stiles opens his locker to find a black box wrapped with a silver ribbon. There’s no card, just an orange Post-it with the letters ‘LM’ scrawled on it. There’s only one person he knows with those initials, and Stiles swallows hard before opening it because the first thing he feels is suspicious. He expects this to be a prank, that maybe this box isn’t from Lydia at all. He puts together a list of names in his mind to identify who might want him as an enemy.

Then finally, hesitating, he opens the box to reveal a pair of designer shoes, and his breath hitches in his throat. _What the hell?_

“Stiles!” Scott calls, half-walking, half-running to him. “Yo, Stiles!”

“Hey, Scott,” he mutters, still dazed by the gift. He runs his fingers across the shoes—real leather, he notes—before hastily closing the box _and_ his locker door.

“You’ll never guess,” his best friend says, grinning from ear to ear that Stiles wonders if he missed the announcement that Christmas came early.

“Allison?”

“How’d you know?”

“Dude, you’re practically glowing.”

“Shut up,” Scott mumbles, and a fist lands on Stiles’ shoulder. “She asked me. _She_ asked _me_.”

“Asked you what?”

“To the dance, man! I’m going with _Allison_.”

“That’s awesome,” Stiles says, but there’s a slight lack of enthusiasm in his voice. “Do you know who Lydia’s going with?”

“No one yet,” Scott replies, still smiling broadly. “At least, that’s what Allison says.”

He bids goodbye to his best friend before departing to his next class, and Stiles is left wondering if there’s a connection between _no one yet_ and that shiny new pair of Varvatos sitting in his locker.

* * *

The next thing he finds are cufflinks, freaking _cufflinks_ , because what the hell would Stiles Stilinski need cufflinks for? He’s also beginning to wonder how Lydia is sneaking the gifts into his locker. His first suspect is Scott, who probably told Allison his locker combination, who then told _Lydia_ , and the thought of them ganging up to buy him off is both ridiculous and upsetting.

The hints are also getting more and more obvious with each day. He’s finally caught on to Lydia’s intention of asking him to the dance, but he can’t quite figure out the _why_ of it all. Why him? Had Lydia finally realised his feelings for her?

Stiles picks up the cufflinks and examines it, tacitly wondering if he’s going to find the whole suit in his locker the next day.

* * *

He does.

It’s in a different-coloured box than the Varvatos, but it’s a whole suit—white shirt, black pants, tuxedo. If he showed up to the dance with all the stuff Lydia’d bought him, his outfit would probably be the most expensive of all.

While Stiles had appreciated the first few gifts, Lydia’s bribery is starting to annoy him. Just the fact that Lydia thinks he’s the kind of guy who has to be offered overpriced things just to go to one dance with her is wounding enough. Has she not paid any attention to him at all? If she would just look him in the eye for once, she’d notice how moonstruck he is by her.

But the only form of contact he has with her is through her gifts, and he swears if he has to see another pricey item in his locker again he’s going to explode. Intuitively, Stiles grabs a scrap of paper wedged in between his books and scribbles on it, leaves it in his locker and slams the door shut.

_Show up with your next gift or you’ll find it in the trashcan._

* * *

“A Rolex? Really, Lydia?”

“What?” Lydia huffs, annoyed and exasperated and wishing that Stiles would just tell her what he wants already. But Stiles just shakes his head silently, setting even more agitated flames to Lydia’s impatience.

“God, Stiles. I’ve tried _everything_. What more do you want? A limo? Done.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Stiles asks, and Lydia feels a tinge of mortification creep underneath her skin. “You can’t buy me, Lydia. I wouldn't be worth the whole world for you.”

Lydia is dumbfounded then, and Lydia is never dumbfounded; never taken off guard. She knows everything about everything, and she’s earned more good grades then she needs to advance right to college. She thought she’d learned more than enough about love from the experiences she’s gained in her life, but it’s apparent that she hasn’t. And she isn’t sure what she knows anymore, because Stiles telling her that he would never be worth anything for her is a burning slap across the cheek.

She wants to say more, but Stiles’ back is already facing her and, to be honest, she doesn't know what she’d say either. The words are trapped at the base of her throat, in a pool of _but_ s and _I don’t know_ s.

* * *

“Stiles—”

“Lydia,” Stiles cuts in, heaving a deep sigh; as though he’s tired, not just with school and werewolves but also Lydia, and at the realisation of this she feels guilt spreading inside her like wildfire. “I have had a crush on you since the third grade. I’ve watched your strawberry blond hair grow down to your cute little ass. I’ve held my breath each time you passed me by in case I wouldn’t be able to breathe at all. I’ve kept track of the days of our conversations, our progress, basically the chances that you and I could—

“Anyway, when you started bribing me with your ‘gifts’, I knew something was up. And then Scott mentioned something about the dance and the obvious fact he was going with Allison, and I knew.”

“Stiles—”

“I’m not done.” Stiles crosses his arms against his chest, and his frown deepens. “You can’t buy me, Lydia. I’m not the rebound guy that you consult when you’re missing Jackson. I’ve been pining for you for more than half my life. I like you and _everything_ about you. Not the accessories that you carry around and think you can impress me with. The least you could do is acknowledge it. If you’d just asked me like a normal person, you and I both know that I would’ve said yes in half a second.”

She can see the hurt buried deep in his face, not because she’s studying him hard enough, but because she just knows. It’s something that she realises she’s always been able to do—read Stiles’s face like an open book, even when he tries to cover it up. Maybe there is a kind of unspoken connection between them after all.

Lydia feels her face heat up with so much humiliation. All through the week she’d been shoving expensive presents in his face in hopes that he’d take her to the dance, all because she’d been so desperate to score a date. All because Allison had gotten one before she did. All because she’d been dumb enough to think Stiles was going to say no if she didn’t provide incentives, when he’s clearly proven his feelings for her more than once. Now? Now she doesn't even want to go to the stupid dance anymore.

“You’re right. I’m an idiot.”

“I didn’t say… I didn’t mean it like that—”

“No, it’s true. I’m the biggest idiot on this planet and don’t you dare say anything to deny it.”

“Lydia, you’re the smartest person I know!—Okay,” he says suddenly when Lydia shoots him a glare, and Stiles makes a show of holding his hands up as a means to surrender. “Okay, you’re an idiot.”

“Good.” Lydia sighs, leaning back against his locker.

“Great.” Stiles proceeds to shut the door to his locker, but Lydia beats him to it.

“You know what? I don’t even want to go to the stupid dance anymore.”

“What?” She sees his face fall. “But…”

“Let’s go somewhere else that night, and then maybe if we feel like it, we can go and crash the party at the last minute.”

“Somewhere else?” Stiles is still registering the words. “Like a…”

“Yeah, Stiles,” Lydia says, rolling her eyes. “Like a date. A real one.”

“Okay.” There’s a long pause before he asks quietly, “Wait, does that mean that I have to give you back the Rolex? And the Varvatos?”

“I swear to god, Stiles, you’re such a dork,” she says, laughing before she elbows him in the ribs.


End file.
